The Political Compass, Neurotransmitter Systems, Brain Structure & Diet

The 2022 Australian federal election was held on Saturday 21 May 2022. I voted in the federal seat of Ryan, QLD. With 30.21% of the vote, it was the first time a Greens Party member was elected as its lower house representative.

Nation wide, the Greens Party won 4 seats, with the "Teal" independents taking 7 in the house of representatives; up from 1 seat collectively. Both movements campaigning on a platform of greater climate action to be taken by the federal government.

What are possible explanations for this dramatic political shift from the authoritarian-right to the opposite side of the political compass, libertarian-left in the seat of Ryan?

• People who are unhappy with the current system (left/progressive), and are happy to accept the risk of trying something new (opposed to right/conservative) who promote a system that is proven to work.
• With a mixture of the alternative vote system & preferences, the Overton window being dramatically moved via completing arguments & campaign promises and Hotelling's Law, the Greens were able to secure the seat.
• Environmental causes are now the number one priority to Ryan voters (I.e. more so than economic, social); being habitat destruction, pollution, over exploitation of resources, invasive species and climate change. They may also believe that the federal government, not the market, is the best way to obtain these goals.

Alternatively, and a focus of this article, there was a demographic shift with an increase in people in the seat of Ryan:

• with greater levels of oestrogen and dopamine neurotransmitters
• practicing a (largely) vegetarian diet; and/or
• have larger grey matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex of the brain.

In attempting to understanding the reason(s) for this political shift, I came across work conducted by Dr. Helen Fisher and the term Genopolitics, which will be discussed later in the article. However, this curiosity first started with my own review of Ryan's party candidates.

Political review

In determining who to vote for (no spoilers here :)), I used the traditional, over-simplified, one dimensional "left-right" political spectrum that some voters and political commentators use to differentiate political parties. I plotted each party's preference votes as a way to determine how closely they aligned with other parties. [Note: I couldn't find preference for UAP and AFP for the seat of Ryan, so made an educated guess based on their policies].

Next, I used the political compass, an adaptation of the Nolan Chart.

For context, Mr. Nolan, American libertarian activist, was known for his invention of the “Nolan chart”, a two-dimensional chart of political opinion that was designed to get past the more familiar but deficient liberal-conservative paradigm. The graph has two axes: one labeled economic freedom and the other called personal freedom. His hope was to persuade people to think of politics as a debate between libertarian and authoritarian positions rather than as one between the traditional left and right.

Key Terms

• Left-Wing:?Left-wing political ideologies are characterised by more progressive views. Since the political compass asks us to isolate the left/right binary for economic preferences, left-wing economic policy often favours higher taxes for wealthy individuals, stronger regulations for businesses, and government spending on social infrastructure.
• Right Wing:?Right-wing political ideologies are characterised by conservative views. Since the political compass asks us to isolate the left/right binary for economic preferences, right-wing economic policy often favours reducing taxes, limiting government spending, and fewer government-imposed restrictions on businesses.
• Authoritarian:?People who support authoritarianism often believe that the state is more important than the individual, and therefore, that authorities are necessary and should be respected. An authoritarian system places power in the hands of a few individual elites that ask all others to comply with their laws and policies.
• Libertarian:?People that hold a libertarian political identity often focus on the freedom of the individual. They believe that personal freedom should be maximised and they support the idea that government authority and control over their citizens should be displaced.?Equality is of utmost importance for libertarians.

I then used the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's (ABC) Vote Compass and Political Compass Tests to determine where I sat on the two dimensional axis. The following series of charts shows where each party approximately sits on the compass since 2007.

The compass to the right is another example.

Additionally, the ABC Vote Compass chart below, based on 334,411 respondents who participated in the Vote Compass quiz from April 10 to May 13, 2022, should be flipped on the horizontal plane to match the axis' in the charts above.

Neurotransmitter Systems

To dig deeper into why a person may identify with or vote for a particular political party, American biological anthropologist Dr. Helen Fisher outlines four broad personalities that are determined by four different neurotransmitter systems in the brain. One of those four chemical systems has a dominant footprint in each person’s basic personality.

Dr. Fisher studies people's temperament (biology; predispositions). Scientists use the word Genopolitics, which posits that politics can be influenced by your DNA; 40-50% of the variation in political views. The other influence of someone's personality is their culture (experiences; environment) which, from a global view point, can be understood via the Inglehart-Welzel chart below.

The key feature of Dr. Fisher's work is that her work expanded to include two brain scanning studies to show that the questionnaires measures what it says it measures; not from linguistics studies, which other personality tests are based on. I.e. if you take her test and it shows dominant levels of dopamine, brain scans will show that your dopamine system will be dominant, compared to the other three. Below is a breakdown of the four different personality types.?

Dopamine LIBERTARIAN Economic Freedom, Personal Freedom (Curious/energetic) [Area of the brain: Substantia Nigra]

• Risk-taking, many interests, restlessness, independent, spontaneously generous, mental flexibility, open-mindedness, idea generation, seek experiences, physical/mental exploration.
• Unreflective, reckless, susceptible to boredom, insincere, opportunistic.

Serotonin AUTHORITARIAN Economic Regulation, Personal Regulation (Cautious/social-norm compliant) [Ventrolateral orbit frontal cortex]

• Conventional, calm & controlled, structured, social, respectful, conscientious, follow the rules, same friends, religious, modest.
• Controlling, close-minded, rigid, stubborn, moralistic, drawn to people like themselves.
• Social-norm compliance due to a gene expression; high in China.

Testosterone CONSERVATIVE Economic Freedom, Personal Regulation (Analytical/tough-minded) [Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex]

• Deep focus, tough minded, intent on achievement, detailed, skeptical, daring, understand rule based systems, direct, decisive, competitive, inventive, experimental, analytical, logical, spatial skills.
• Aloof, less empathetic, mind blindness, demanding, impatient, uncompromising.

Oestrogen LIBERAL Economic Regulation, Personal Freedom (Pro-social/empathetic) [Inferior frontal gyrus]

• Imaginative, intuitive, introspective, harmony, empathetic, trusting.
• Gullible, placating, scattered, back stabbing, unforgiving, hypersensitive, indecisive, ruminating.

Dr. Fisher has then been able to plot the geographical distribution of the four different neurotransmitter systems on a map of the United States of America, using data taken from a personality test she developed, used by dating sites like Match.com, taken by over 14 million people.

In summary, the neurotransmitter systems can be crudely placed over the political compass in the following way.

Brain Structure

From neurotransmitter systems to brain structure, Kanai R et al. used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to find out if political orientations are correlated with brain structure in young adults.?

To test the hypothesis that political liberalism (versus conservatism) is associated with differences in gray matter volume in anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), they recorded structural MRI scans from 90 healthy young adults (61% female) who self-reported their political attitudes confidentially on a five-point scale from “very liberal” to “very conservative”. We then used voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analyses to investigate the relationship between these attitudes, expressed as a numeric score between one and five, and gray matter volume. They found:

• increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex was significantly associated with liberalism (Figure A below).
• increased gray matter volume in the right amygdala was significantly associated with conservatism (Figure B below).

The gray matter volumes of ACC and the right amygdala allowed the classifier to distinguish individuals who reported themselves as conservative from those who reported themselves as very liberal with a high accuracy (71.6% ± 4.8% correct, p?= 0.011). This suggests that it is possible to determine the self-expressed political attitude of individuals, at least for the self-report measure we used, based on structural MRI scans.

It is important to note that the neural processes implicated are likely to reflect complex processes of the formation of political attitudes rather than a direct representation of political opinions per se.

Their findings are consistent with the proposal that political orientation is associated with psychological processes for managing fear and uncertainty. The amygdala has many functions, including fear processing. Individuals with a large amygdala are more sensitive to fear, which, taken together with our findings, might suggest the testable hypothesis that individuals with larger amygdala are more inclined to integrate conservative views into their belief system. Similarly, it is striking that conservatives are more sensitive to disgust, and the insula is involved in the feeling of disgust. On the other hand, our finding of an association between anterior cingulate cortex volume and political attitudes may be linked with tolerance to uncertainty. One of the functions of the anterior cingulate cortex is to monitor uncertainty and conflicts. Thus, it is conceivable that individuals with a larger ACC have a higher capacity to tolerate uncertainty and conflicts, allowing them to accept more liberal views.

Foods that boost!

So... can we boost the release of specific neurotransmitters with food? In addition to dietary considerations below, other factors such as getting enough sleep, exercising, listening to music, meditating, and spending time in the sun can boost and help stabilise neurotransmitters.

Dopamine

In order to produce dopamine, your body needs to break down an amino acids known as tyrosine and phenylalanine. Foods that are high in?tyrosine, the amino acid that dopamine is made from, which will give your body the building blocks needed for dopamine production.

• Eat more turkey, beef, eggs, cheese, soy, legumes, beans, nuts, seeds. Drink coffee.
• Eat less saturated fat; animal fat, butter, full-fat dairy, palm oil and coconut oil.

Serotonin

Serotonin is synthesised via the amino acid tryptophan. Additionally, carbohydrates?cause the body to release more insulin, which promotes amino acid absorption and leaves tryptophan in the blood. If you mix high-tryptophan foods with carbohydrates, you might get a serotonin boost.

• Cacao, eggs, cheese, tofu, nuts and seeds, fermented foods, spinach, tuna, salmon and other fish.

Publish in Nature's July 2022 issue of it's Molecular Psychiatry Journal, Moncrieff, J. et al.?provides a systematic umbrella review of the evidence. It concludes that the main areas of serotonin research provide no consistent evidence of there being an association between serotonin and depression, and no support for the hypothesis that depression is caused by lowered serotonin activity or concentrations. Therefore the serotonin hypothesis of depression is potentially no longer valid.

Testosterone

Testosterone is a male sex hormone produced by a man's testes, and a female's ovaries in small amounts. Foods that are high in antioxidants, zinc, magnesium, and vitamin D may help boost low testosterone levels. Normal testosterone levels in males range from 280 to 1,100 nanograms per deciliter (ng/dL). Normal female testosterone levels range from 15 to 70 nanograms per deciliter (ng/dL).

• Onions, garlic, meat, leafy green vegetables, fatty fish (salmon, tuna, mackerel), eggs, mushrooms, cheese, grapes, honey.

Oestrogen

Oestrogen and progesterone are two major?sex hormones?in the human body. Oestrogen is a hormone that has many functions in the body, including promoting sexual and reproductive development. Phytoestrogens, also known as dietary oestrogen, are naturally occurring plant compounds that may function similarly to the Oestrogen the human body produces.

• Soybeans and Edamame, Legumes, Dried fruit, Tofu, Wholegrain Bread, Flax seeds, Sesame seeds, Garlic, Berries.

Below is a course overlay of different foods on the neurotransmitter systems political compass.

Neurotransmitter systems (I.e. Serotonin), Medical Doctors and Weimar Politics

Haque, O et al, 2012 via the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, explored rationalisations of German physicians to Nazi membership; a greater enrolment than for any other profession at the time, topping even lawyers and businessmen. The implications could infer that people who have a predominate serotonin neurotransmitter system, and therefore be more likely to be social-norm compliant, have had a influential political effect.

During the Weimar Republic in the mid-twentieth century, more than half of all German physicians became?early?joiners of the Nazi Party. With the marginalisation of Jewish physicians, proceeding to coerced “experimentation,” “euthanisation,” and sterilisation, and given the medical oath to “do no harm,” many postwar ethical analyses have strained to make sense of these seemingly paradoxical atrocities.

A combination of factors include:

• professional vulnerabilities among physicians in general (valuing conformity and obedience to authority, valuing the prevention of contamination and fighting against mortality, and possessing a basic interest in biomedical knowledge and research);
• economic factors and motives (related to physician economic insecurity and incentives for economic advancement); and
• Nazi ideological and historical rationalisations (beliefs about Social Darwinism, eugenics, and the social organism as sacred).

One theory for Nazi doctors' abandonment of the ancient and most basic tenets of ethical medicine is that medical doctors tend to have an authoritarian personality, characterised by a strong adherence to rules and a weak ability to control more primitive, “id-driven,” impulses.?Other possible explanations have been rooted in theories of practitioner narcissism. They include an inflated sense of self-importance in shaping the future of the nation and a desire for career advancement and public praise.

Political Compass Alternatives/Expansions

The models below are alternatives and/or expansions upon the political compass.

1. The first with respect to culture; the other ~50% of the variation in political views and personality influence (experiences, environment).
2. The extremes in political ideological; and
3. An annotated political compass.

A chart proposed by Dr. Ronald Inglehart and supported by the World Values Survey to plot cultural ideology onto two dimensions. On the y-axis it covered issues of tradition and religion, like patriotism, abortion, euthanasia and the importance of obeying the law and authority figures. At the bottom of the chart is the?traditionalist?position on issues like these (with loyalty to country and family and respect for life considered important), while at the top is the?secular?position.The x-axis deals with self-expression, issues like everyday conduct and dress, acceptance of diversity (including foreigners) and innovation, and attitudes towards people with specific controversial lifestyles such as homosexuality and vegetarianism, as well as willingness to partake in political activism. At the right of the chart is the open?self-expressionist?position, while at the left is its opposite position, which Dr. Inglehart calls?survivalist.

It may be possible that the political party compass's for each country, could be overlaid this one, and therefore you maybe be able to indirectly compare how "left" or "right" a political party is compared to another country? I.e. Australian Liberal Party is actually "left" of the American Democrats.

Jeff Greenberg and Eva Jonas posit a model comprising the standard left-right axis and an axis representing ideological rigidity. For Greenberg and Jonas, ideological rigidity has "much in common with the related concepts of dogmatism and authoritarianism" and is characterised by "believing in strong leaders and submission, preferring one’s own in-group, ethnocentrism and nationalism, aggression against dissidents, and control with the help of police and military." Greenberg and Jonas posit that high ideological rigidity can be motivated by "particularly strong needs to reduce fear and uncertainty" and is a primary shared characteristic of "people who subscribe to any extreme government or ideology, whether it is right-wing or left-wing."

The above is an annotated political compass that could help understand certain sections of the compass.

Summary

This article attempts to highlight how political views can be shaped via temperament (Neurotransmitter Systems, Brain Structure) and how diet can influence the Genopolitics phenomenon; approximately 40-50% of the variation in political views. It is hoped that the political compass can be a way to better understand and evaluate politics and political attitudes.

An area for further research, is how parties are plotted on the compass as it relates to voters and the Overton window. As for ABC's Vote Compass quiz:

• Parties are plotted on the grid in the same way that users are: by using their responses to the questionnaire in order to plot them on the grid. Party responses to each of the questions in Vote Compass are derived through careful research of the party platforms complemented by a consultative process between the academic team and the parties themselves.

Appendix

Ayurvedic diet alternatives

Related to pairing foods with your core neurotransmitter system(s), Ayurvedic diets provides personalised recommendations about which foods to eat and avoid based on your body type.

• Pitta (fire + water).?Intelligent, hard-working, and decisive. This dosha generally has a medium physical build, short temper, and may suffer from conditions like indigestion, heart disease, or high blood pressure.
• Vata (air + space).?Creative, energetic, and lively. People with this dosha are usually thin with a light frame and may struggle with digestive issues, fatigue, or anxiety when out of balance.
• Kapha (earth + water).?Naturally calm, grounded, and loyal. Those with a kapha dosha often have a sturdier frame and may have issues with weight gain, asthma, depression, or diabetes.

For example, the pitta dosha focuses on cooling, energising foods and limits spices, nuts, and seeds.

Meanwhile, the vata dosha favours warm, moist, and grounding foods while restricting?dried fruits, bitter herbs, and raw veggies.

Finally, the kapha dosha limits heavy foods like nuts, seeds, and oils in favour of fruits, veggies, and legumes.

Red meat, artificial sweeteners, and processed ingredients are limited for all three doshas. Instead, the Ayurvedic diet encourages eating healthy whole foods.

References

1. Dr. Helen Fisher on How Brain Chemistry Determines Personality and Politics
2. Serotonin vs. Dopamine: What Are the Differences?
3. Political Orientations Are Correlated with Brain Structure in Young Adults
4. Quadrant Theory
5. David Nolan, 66, Is Dead; Started Libertarian Party
6. My Food Data
7. What Is the Ayurvedic Diet? Benefits, Downsides, and More
8. The Political Compass
9. Vote Compass ABC Australia
10. The serotonin theory of depression: a systematic umbrella review of the evidence
11. Why did so many German doctors join the Nazi Party early?
12. Electoral results for the Division of Ryan
13. Political Compass
14. How agriculture hastens species extinction | 60 Minutes
15. Hotelling's Law Explained
16. Psychological Motives and Political Orientation—The Left, the Right, and the Rigid: Comment on Jost et al. (2003)
17. The Political Compass Explained
18. World Values Survey, Inglehart–Welzel Cultural Map
19. Political spectrum
20. Ryan (Key Seat) - Federal Election 2022
21. Which electorates are most left- or right-leaning? Vote Compass took a look
22. Environmental Progress: Extinctions
23. Vox Pops Labs